For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. ---Ephesians 6:12

"The age of casual Catholicism is over; the age of heroic Catholicism has begun. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead must be Catholics by CONVICTION." ---Fr. Terrence Henry TOR, Franciscan University of Steubenville

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Saturday, March 22, 2008

At the risk of beating a dead horse (which is hard to do when the equine keeps looking up at you and neighing), I’d like to post snippets of a couple of very good columnists on their latest articles dealing with Obama’s Race Speech.

Mark Steyn has become my favorite conservative columnist for his intellect, clever wit, and attention to detail. One finds it difficult to argue with him on any point because he backs it up so well. Here is an excerpt from his latest:

[The Rev. Wright believes that AIDS was created by the government of the United States – and not as a cure for the common cold that went tragically awry and had to be covered up by Karl Rove, but for the explicit purpose of killing millions of its own citizens. The government has never come clean about this, but the Rev. Wright knows the truth. "The government lied," he told his flock, "about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

Does he really believe this? If so, he's crazy, and no sane person would sit through his gibberish, certainly not for 20 years.

Or is he just saying it? In which case, he's profoundly wicked. If you understand that AIDS is spread by sexual promiscuity and drug use, you'll know that it's within your power to protect yourself from the disease. If you're told that it's just whitey's latest cunning plot to stick it to you, well, hey, it's out of your hands, nothing to do with you or your behavior.]

Ann Coulter, in spite of her recent support for a Hillary presidency as a reaction to McCain’s nomination, continues to earn my undying respect. Whereas once she appeared on Sunday round-table discussions sounding rather flummoxed (as though gasping for air), while using the jack-hammer approach to make her points, she now fluidly (and rather attractively) lilts her words as she effortlessly stilettos the arguments of her opponents with surgical skill.

[We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.]

And this, too...

[Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama's grandmother -- who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school -- has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.]

It looks as though the fallout from Barack Obama’s relationships and/or associations with black separatist people (Rev. Wright) or groups (New Black Panthers) has finally had an effect on the polls. The latest Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll now shows Obama trailing Hillary Clinton 44% to 46% respectively, which is a big change from Obama’s nine point lead (49% to 40%) over Hillary at the end of February.

No one has benefited more, it seems, than John McCain has from the Democrat slugfest. Having the Republican nomination already wrapped up, he holds his biggest lead over Obama thus far, 49% to 41%, while his lead over Hillary Clinton remains solid at 49% to 43%.

Obviously with the November election several months away, the polls can and will change. But isn’t nice to know we don’t HAVE to hope Hillary wins just so McCain can beat the Democrat. He can beat either of them, if he doesn’t forsake his party. Ahhh, and therein lies the rub.

Friday, March 21, 2008

In case you've been AWOL from church this week, you might want to know there have been lots of activities going on all week. Every one of them has been an important remembrance, or in some cases a recreation of the events leading to our salvation in Christ. Many people only seem to find the time to cut to the chase and attend Easter services on Sunday, which is certainly better than nothing. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts I will have to search for an Easter service at a truck stop on the road. But...I will not miss tonight's Tenebrae service at home.

The Tenebrae service is not what some would expect in that it's not a joyous occasion. Things are, in fact, rather subdued and dark so as to recreate the betrayal, abandonment, and agony of the Passion suffered by Jesus for our sakes. If done properly it can be a very emotionally charged event, bringing the parishioners that much closer to God.

This afternoon I'll be watching the DVD version of Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ for full effect. I must say, I am feeling very much on fire for the Lord today. I wish the same for everyone on Good Friday! Have a happy Easter!!!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

It's been an interesting decade of sorts where the style of trashing the divinity of Jesus (whether or not he climbed down off the cross and married Mary Magdeline, then moving to France), questioning the method of crucifixion, or challenging the validity of the Holy Bible, has been very much in vogue and been running rampant. And when someone like Mel Gibson puts together a film with a more traditional point of view about Christ's crucifixion bearing more historical accuracy than any done prior, it is Mel who gets crucified.

I bring up this issue because the BBC has seen fit to slap together a series called The Passion which shows Jesus crucified in, of all things, a foetal position. This is done obviously to bring Our Savior down a few notches to make Him look less divine and more...human. Their official reason is, they claim, "new historical evidence" that shows he did not die in the traditional way. And what is this "new historical evidence?" "Lengthy research," claims Simon Elliot (a producer of the show), which includes a crucified skeleton found in Jerusalem in 1968. He went on further to say that there were many ways prisoners were crucified by the Romans back then.

Well, there were certainly many forms of execution by the Romans, who seemed to take great pleasure in creating misery in clever ways. One involved being put in a large bag filled with rats and hung on a post. But crucifixion is crucifixion: to be nailed to a wooden cross with arms extended, right side up or upside down! Otherwise what is the point of the horizontal crossbeam? This attempt to make us believe that Jesus was nailed to a post by his arms above his head and not his hands outstretched is itself an attempt to deny history. The Bible itself is an historical document containing four Gospels which go into details about the crucifixion. And in their attempt to humanize Jesus, the BBC ignores the most important and common historical documents available.

But the deicide doesn't stop there. Mary, mother of Jesus, is played as an angry woman, while Pilate, Caiaphas, and Judas are portrayed with much sympathy, reasoning that history has not been fair to them. After all, Bart Ehrman would say that anytime history is written by the winners it must be suspect.

To me the secular fundamentalists are at it again. They don't want Jesus or anyone else telling them how to behave or with whom they can have sex, so they chip away at the divinity of Jesus sliver by sliver or log by log until their own non-christian beliefs become the mainstream....

With a new religious tolerance and openness in mind, or perhaps its bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, the nation of Qatar, a Wahhabi-style Sunni Islamic country, saw the consecration of Our Lady Of The Rosary, the first Christian Church in that nation.

The new church, located in the city of Doha, has no steeple or cross by which to identify it by its Christian faith, so as not to offend the locals. In spite of this the 20+ year project includes five other Christian churches under construction of different denominations. Read the whole story here in the Jerusalem Post.

Is it just me or do the rest of you fear a near future for those churches that includes being burned to the ground by local angry mobs of Muslims? Anytime you have to hide steeples and crosses from church exteriors due to concerns of the sensibilities of locals, I'd say trouble is coming.

May God protect and bless the parishioners of Our Lady Of The Rosary, because I fear the government of Qatar will stick their necks out only so far to protect non-Muslims of any kind.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Okay, now let me get this straight. If the Republicans win we stay in Iraq until the war is over. That's what they're telling us.

But if a Democrat wins we still stay in Iraq??? I see. That's the same game the Democrats pulled in winning back control of both houses of Congress. They promised they'd pull the troops out of Iraq, but only made half-hearted attempts to do so. Such would be as well with a Democrat President.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

I have never bought into the sometimes old fashioned Protestant view that Jesus was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Nor do I buy into the notion that He was a black man, just to make separatists feel included. Jesus was most likely a product of his environment, looks-wise, which would make him Mediteranian looking, or more to the point-----> Hebrew looking.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

He resigned because he had no political support from either aisle, and now might face prosecution for money laundering in an attempted cover-up.

The worst part about what he did, in addition to betraying his wife and family, is that he put himself at risk by engaging in unprotected sex. Actually, if he was also maintaining a sexual relationship with his wife, then he also put her at risk, too, for H.I.V., herpes, the clap, etc...

Mrs. Spitzer should have herself checked out very soon with a blood test.

A USA Today article says that one in four girls HAS a sexually transmitted disease. I wonder what the stats are on prostitutes????

First let me thank CNN for fanning the flames of discontent among the Democrats. It’s almost as much fun as watching Hillary supporters accuse the media of bias against their candidate. Now they know what it’s like to be Republican. But nothing is quite like watching Democrats get caught in their own double standards, be they due to racial or gender bias comments.

In defense of Ms. Ferraro, she is at least partially correct on Obama. He is black and he has an electoral advantage for being so. Were it not for his race, the vast majority of blacks would probably be voting for Hillary this year. After all, her husband that they used to love so much used to be considered the first black President. Now he’s a racist redneck from Arkansas who beats up on their latest African-American candidate. And all because most Democrats have found someone they like better: Barack Obama. Perhaps they never really liked the Clintons, they simply clung to them until someone better came along.

And one cannot miss the fact that Obama has only been in Washington for two years. His only other experience in government are his years as a state legislator in Illinois. Now granted there was one other Presidential candidate in our nation’s history with such a resume, but Lincoln was thought by many at the start of his administration to be woefully unequal to the tasks at hand. And after much bungling, Honest Abe came into his own around 1863. Then eventually, by the start of his second term, became the man most consider to be one of the greatest Presidents of all time.

In this day and age when cities and even entire nations can be vaporized in a matter of minutes, we really don’t have time for on-the-job training for someone whose greatest qualification is that he is minority, and therefore looks like America. So for these reasons Ferraro is right.

But what Ms. Ferraro misses is that Barack Obama is really quite charismatic, and would be so even if he were white. He is very intelligent in spite of his leftist views. And I would also say, myself having had a brief career in radio, that he sounds charismatic even without video. His voice is deeply rich and pleasing to the ear. That has to help.

But offering up Hillary Clinton as the alternative is quite laughable. She would not have gone far in politics if her name were simply Hillary Rodham. All of those softball questions she’s gotten from the time she ran against Lazio for Senate until the MSM fell in lust for Obama would have been merely her dream….like dreams of most Republican candidates.

May God save us from silly, Peter-Pan, Democrat voters who will never grow up…

Thursday, March 6, 2008

There is a new widget on my blog's left column, which I don't think I'll keep for very long, because it links back to the Huffington Post. For those of you who avoid liberal websites, The Huffington Post (aka. Huff Po,...or as Pam at Atlas would say, Puff Ho) is a blog created by Arianna Huffington, that ultra-left-wing, Zsa-zsa Gabor sound-a-like you might have heard once or twice on Sean Hannity some time ago.

The name of the widget is Fundrace 2008, and allows anyone to type in anybody's name to see how much, if any, that person donated to whomever's political campaign. And when I say "anybody" I mean anybody at all. Celebrities, politicians, your next door neighbor,...all of them show up. You can see who Larry David donates to, as well as that friend of yours who claimed to send a candidate money (but really didn't).

But that's not all... When donating to a Presidential campaign you are asked for your name, your mailing address, and your employer's name. Little do you realize at the time that all of this will be public record and can be accessed with a click at Puff Ho---I mean Huffington Post.

Although my own employer is listed for all to see, I had the presence of mind to list my PO Box rather than my physical address. Thank goodness for that. But I would imagine that some celebs have unwittingly made known their home addresses for perverts, stalkers, and overzealous political foes. Some bloggers have done this, too. So much for our rights to privacy. But if you do consider making a campaign donation this year, it might be a good idea to acquire a Post Office Box for your address. And you can always list your employer as The NOYFB Corp. That's None Of Your Friggin' Business.

Matt K Cassens

(not my photo)

Click on picture above for information about the author.

Also, I want to add that not everyone I link to below marches lock-step with me on every issue. But I link to them nonetheless because I think they are righteous. They have taken sides in their respective battles, political and/or religious, and have chosen wisely. May you do the same.

Followers

The middle east media research institute

Stop Islamization of america

Fair Use Statement

Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.

I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.